Alyn Carlson has been fixing up this old Massachussetts church up for 28 years. That worries me for myself – is that how long it takes? Oh god, I hope not; I’m on Year 7. I love her place, though. I’d copy Alyn and hang the ribs of a boat in my place too, if the whole thing didn’t already look like an upside down boat. As you can see here, converting churches doesn’t always work out very well, but I really like this one – in fact this is one of the first ones I’ve really liked. The solution of dividing the space vertically by adding a floor often causes problems because it interfers with windows, but Alyn’s solution of cutting out around the 2-story windows is very clever. And I really like the plywood wall and the firepole. I think one reason this place works is that she has the knack of combining older features with modernist elements – the modern makes the place feel less like a vintage wooden schoolhouse (as I found out myself). Because there’s just something forbidding about living in school – everything becomes homework by definition. Alyn’s also a graphic designer and painter and I really appreciate her permission to reprint these excellent photos, all taken by her boyfriend Paul Clancy.

This chapel in Tarnów, Poland, is by Marta Rowińska & Lech Rowiński of the firm Beton (photos by Beton) and was completed in 2009. Like so many wooden churches, it feels like an inverted wooden ship. Being a completely non-religious non-churchgoer who really dislikes all the tortured religious iconography and narrative (and could do without the cross), I don’t know why I’m so attracted to all these humble churches (see also here). Maybe because there’s something surrealist or fantastical about their architecture, not just in that they suggest poetical barns or ships, but because their utility is somewhat non-utilitarian and undefinable. Having said that, the design of this church grew out of very practical, material concerns (like so much successful architecture): Via archdaily:

“Building the church had also a “side” purpose: to bring the local community together. It was built by not very skilled workers, so the technology had to be really simple. Concrete slab as a foundation, timber structure as the main “spine” of the building and the wooden cladding. There is almost no detail, no fancy elements. This is also a kind of experiment – how to create a certain quality of space with the use of rudimentary technical simplicity. The investor, who is a quite well-known Polish writer, decided to save this small bit of the Vistula bank from becoming an another wild beach with a cheap bar on the side.”

Western European churches, especially those near or in shipping towns, often suspended a model ship from the ceiling as a symbol of good luck for sailors. The practice is probably most common in Denmark, but is fairly widespread. It would be surprising if the current craze for ship chandeliers in decor (see the ship chandeliers in houses at bottom) weren’t related to this tradition. For a whole set of photos of church ships, see here. Photo at top is in Vilnius, Lithuania; second is on the island of Seili, Finland. For photos below, click on photo for information.

Above, Canterbury Cathedral. Directly below (and at very top of post), a crystal ship in the Saints Peter & Paul’s Cathedral in Vilnius; photos by Beny Shlevich. Below that, two examples of the ship chandelier that’s become so popular now. It and others are contemporary, but there are antique versions of it too, usually from the early 1900s.

The two interior design photos above – both of them strangely aristocratic/colonial - are of a house by Jonathan Adler, top, and an apartment styled by designer Lili Diallo, below. The big ships are beautiful, even if there’s always plunder in their wake.

Here are three converted churches which seem much more successful than most of the examples in the last post. Above is a 19th century chapel in the Flemish village of Bazel which has been converted into 2 loft-type houses. Thanks to the amazing Office for Word and Image OWI for permission to reprint this photo here – Verne is the photographer. When a church is divided into separate storeys, the space seems to become automatically easier to live in. This seems obvious now but when I set out it seemed a shame to alter the building so radically. As it turns out, though, a 30-40′ cathedral ceiling is not exactly cosy. 

Above, a converted church in Kensal Green, London, via casa sugar and lightlocations. 

A conversion in Brisbane, from desire to inspire. Very, very shiny! The solution to the problem of churchiness here has been to make everything a uniform white, and I can sympathize with that solution. My experience with hanging art in a church space is that it can look a little odd when it flanks arched windows, and that’s why in my little church, the art is still on the floor, stacked against the walls. The more photos of church conversions I look at, the more challenging the whole project seems. If anyone has a favourite church conversion can you send it on?

This is the Parish Church Complex of Marco de Canevezes, Portugal. It was designed by Portuguese architect Alvaro Siza with Rolando Torgo and completed in 1990. It’s a deceptively simple building. Its most obvious feature is a stunning pair of tall, narrow front doors matched by beautiful pew chairs in the same warm orange wood, but one of its real achievements is the way Siza exploited natural light and the daily movement of the sun to create changing shapes and moods in the altar.

Even for a non-believing non-churchgoer, church architecture can be extremely compelling. This is not surprising given the fact that church architecture is specifically designed for inspiration, contemplation and the freeing of the mind from distractions and harrassments, rather than for more utilitarian or venal purposes (not that religion can’t be venal too, but that’s a different issue). With increasing social secularization it strikes me that this meditative effect is what many of us are trying to achieve in our own spaces, for better or for worse. Of course it’s this modern mood of expansive whiteness that is being emulated, rather than the dark, gargoyle-ridden behemoths of European stone cathedral architecture. This church, which seems to be more about soothing the mind than fearing god, is one of my favourite Siza buildings. If you’re interested in reading more about Siza, look here (and if you click on the Pritzker jury citation it gives a sense of why they gave him the prize in 1992). His own website is here, and there is a good Flickr set of his Serpentine installation in London here. The photos in this post are from a favourite back issue of Domus, the superb Italian architecture magazine, from March 1998. More photos of this beautiful church are here.

In the photo below, you can see the two low, vertical windows that bring vertical spires of light into the altar.

As a kid I knew Arlo Guthrie’s Alice’s Restaurant off by heart, including the monologue (long story), but I never intended to actually end up living in a church myself. In 2002 I was looking for a cheap fixer-upper in Vancouver’s somewhat sketchy downtown eastside, back when prices were really low here, and suddenly a rundown little wooden church came on the market. On a lark I made an appointment to see it, and two days later I ended up owning it, something I’ve regretted more than once. Everyone who sees it tells me he/she has always wanted to live in a church, and while I obviously understand that fantasy, I must say that the job of making a church livable is not for everyone. Even without changing the basic structure, footprint, roofline or even any of the rooms/doors/walls, it’s more work than your average house renovation. For one thing, houses are built upwards for a reason – smaller foundation, smaller roof, and heat travels up. For another, they contain storage! Cupboards! A little church, on the other hand, has none of those things because it’s effectively a barn. The place is livable now, but the decor is entirely haphazard still –  you think decorating in a small space is hard? Try having all your stuff in one big room! It’s a bit premature to publicly post photos of the place, but I’m doing it anyway because I need to get a head start on renting the space out during the 3 weeks of Vancouver’s 2010 Winter Olympics, as a way of paying off some of the restoration. Apologies for using this blog as craigslist – there will be a better post later, when things are more complete. Above is the church when I moved in, when the star and cross were still on the roof, nailed straight into the shingles and creating serious leaks. Jesus may have been a carpenter, but the church volunteers sure weren’t.

I took the above photo during the realtor’s open house, the first day I saw the place, and this is pretty much how I inherited it, including pool table and some 1970s green pews. Notice the wainscotting the whole way down the room, and the jade trim.

Above is the same room in 2006, a few weeks after the floors were finished. In 2007 the altar area became a fireplace alcove with a super-efficient Danish wood stove, below:

The giant timber bamboo in the altar area, above, was brought inside as a party decoration when it was still green. A heavy snowfall had snapped the stems in the garden outside. After a month or two it turned this blond colour and somehow I never took it back outside, because without it the altar is too austere.

Photos above and below show the front area, inside what was the tiny original church. That church was perpendicular to the main part of the later church, and even though it’s now all one room, you can tell that they were once at right angles because the ceiling trusses and floorboards run in a different direction. You can see this in the photo below, the one with the ceiling fans. The older part of the church, above, houses the front entrance, office (you can see a temporary desk set up while a wall-mounted desk is being made), and to the right are the master bedroom and bathroom. Above, the front doors are obscured by a hanging room divider made from British army snow camouflage netting. This will be replaced by a tall white rolling wardrobe that will double as a privacy pony wall, an item that becomes necessary when your front doors are at street level. There’s more info on each photo in the Flickr page – click on image. Below, you can see one of the only two original pews remaining from the earliest days of the church – they’re made out of the same Douglas fir as the building and have crosses carved into the each side. There were other pews from the 60s but they were cheap and had no redeeming features, so l I broke them up so that the heavy, old-growth Douglas fir could be re-used, including for an indoor swing.

Above is a view into the bedroom. The bed is inside the church’s original altar, a 5-sided cupola. The bed platform is a reconstruction of the original altar stage, which had been removed by a previous owner, and conveniently it fits a king size bed. And no, it doesn’t feel funny to sleep in the altar. After wondering if the place had been deconsecrated, I did some research and found that there is, in fact, no such thing as deconsecration. Deconsecration would essentially be the removal of a blessing, and apparently the removal of a blessing is the rough equivalent of a curse. It is heartening that Christian churches don’t remove blessings, not because I believe in blessings, but because the idea of removing them seems fishy. When a church sells one of its churches and its altar paraphernalia has been removed, the building automatically becomes a civilian, non-religious structure. There’s actually a long tradition of ex-churches being used for other purposes going back many centuries. Neighbourhood kids always ask if the place is haunted, but if it is, I’ve never noticed it. If it’s haunted, it’s haunted by the ghosts of the many cats and birds and rodents who died in the crawlspace, and whose skeletal remains, uncounted numbers of them, I had to remove. And a raccoon. I have photos of all of this in a file called “church horrors” but I will spare you.

The worst of the projects are now completed, after the sanding of the ceiling, substitution of drywall for plaster, insulation of all walls, ceiling and roof, refinishing of floors, re-roofing, updating of the kitchen and general repair and maintenance. It just needs decor fine-tuning and more storage, which at this point almost amount to the same thing. For more photos of the process, see below or click on photos to go to the Flickr set.

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